Pittswood Birds

A new month begins, and as you can see by the photo above, Pittswood has joined the rest of the county in having a covering of snow - about 5 inches fell overnight.

I attempted to walk into work this morning but was beaten back by a strong NE wind, stinging snow and thigh high drifts at Migrant alley, so no work for me today!

Most of the day was spent window watching, not the best place to get a good December species total going, but I did get 27 today, some way still to go then to beat the record of 73, achieved in 2008. The average December tally is 60.8, with a combined total for the 8 Decembers gone, of 82.

After restocking all the feeders, and chucking out more seed onto an area I cleared of snow, the following species were seen :-

Peak Numbers.

14 BLUE TITS
5 GREAT TITS
14 GOLDFINCH
12 GREENFINCH
25 CHAFFINCH
7 HOUSE SPARROW
2 DUNNOCK
4 ROBIN
7 COLLARED DOVE
3 STARLING
3 BLACKBIRD
2 GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER
1 each of NUTHATCH, JAY, MAGPIE, JACKDAW, SPARROWHAWK, WOODPIGEON, also some scarcer birds that dont visit my garden to often, a MOORHEN, a SISKIN and two REDWING - quite a good garden bird list if I do say so myself :-) Strange I had no Coal Tit today.

Birds noted going over were few and far between, but BLACK HEADED GULL, FIELDFARE, GREEN WOODPECKER, CARRION CROW and nice flock of 41 LAPWING going south, and best of all, and get this! A RED KITE !! it flew NW low over, what a brilliant bird for the December list, any months list in fact! This is the second Red Kite I have recorded from the house, lets hope it becomes a common occurrence :-)

I took some ''through the window'' photo's today

Above: Goldfinch and Greenfinch
Below: a Jay

Lastly the Moorhen, not had one of these in the garden since the last cold spell back in February.